TRAILER: NYMPHOMANIAC

Is Lars Von Trier a pornographer?

Lars Von Trier is making people squirm. The Danish filmmaker responsible for Melancholia (2011) and Antichrist (2009), has been releasing trailers and “appetizers” for his latest project Nymphomaniac, a story about sex and love addiction starring Charlotte Gainsbourg, Stellan Skarsgård, and Shia LaBeouf, for the last several weeks. They are likened by critics to “bad pornography.”

Headlines surrounding this movie wonder whether Nymphomaniac is about addiction, sexuality, or simply gratuitous nudity. Apparently LaBeouf sent Von Trier a sex tape to win his role. YouTube took the trailer off its site for nudity. And to top it off, a group of kids waiting for Disney’s FROZEN were accidentally treated to the uncensored trailer at a theater in Tampa, Florida last week. According to a FOX affiliate, parent’s were “stunned by what they saw.”

At heart Von Trier is an art director. And while it’s difficult to believe the man responsible for the jaw-dropping Melancholia introduction, featuring Wagner’s Tristan & Isolde, would ever stoop to salacious nudity, antics like getting thrown out of Cannes 2011 for joking about being a Nazi haven’t won him any friends. Especially now that clumsy projectionists are showing his intensely sexual trailer to school children.